Three Years Ago...

Three years ago, I launched a blog with my bestie.

Three years ago, I was living in Hawaii and life was really good. I was a stay at home mom, worked a part-time fitness job, and she and I had dreams of getting our words out about motherhood and surviving with wine, humor and friendship. We had big hopes for getting onto Ellen (maybe not really but it was fun to think about). And, honestly, it just felt good to write and dream and feel connected.

Days after our launch, my world turned upside down. I lost my mom by suicide. Like Alice, I fell. I fell into the deep and dark pit of grief where you can still see the sun from the bottom of your little hole but are surrounded by the muck of black tar that is depression and have to claw your way through it, every single second of every single day. Everything felt like a task. Taking care of my beautiful three kids (one of which was not even six months and got RSV a week after my mom passed). Getting out of bed. Getting the kids breakfast. Making it through the diaper changes. Making it through the tantrums. Surviving the sun when you feel like you want to crawl into a very dark room and sleep. Forcing yourself to laugh when your insides are shattered.

That period of my life is such a blur now but I did what any strong woman does and carried the fuck on.

I continued to write and I'm sad to say that I selfishly took our happy, light, and carefree mom blog and turned it into therapy and wrote about the heaviness of carrying on after tragedy.

And then I stopped. Stopped writing. Stopped being creative. And I focused on surviving and healing because everything else felt too heavy.

The Army moved us from Hawaii to our new home in New Jersey and I pushed through my grief and stayed afloat. I felt like I could no longer put into words the feelings that were bottling up and getting ready to explode. My husband started traveling more and more with work. My kids, who were no longer babies, were finally going to bed at night. And here I was in a new town, without my tribe of Army wives who had gotten me through the roughest patches, and was all alone at night.

Drinking bottles of wine? I had already done that. Eating my way to cope with grief? Yup. My baby/grief weight was being carried around with (not/so/much) grace and I seriously could not pack on one more pound.

But... this energy that had been building up in my chest and in my soul had to come out and I had nothing to do. So, what did I do? I went online shopping!

Added to my Zulily cart: a box of paints, a few cheap brushes and 8x10 canvases. It was on sale, so if I sucked, what was the harm?

My items finally arrived (you know that shit takes forever) so late at night, after the kids had gone to bed and Joe was gone, I went outside with my glass of wine and pack of cigarettes (because that's what unhealthy people do while grieving) and I let it out. I went to town and painted my soul out. For me. For my mom. For everything that we had. For everything that I lost. And I let my soul sing. I felt her sitting next to me and showing me the peace that she finally felt. And that night, I went to bed, feeling the first bits of my own peace that I had felt in a really, really, really long time.

And then the next night came and I couldn't wait to put the kids to bed so that I could do it again! I mean, I always can't wait for the kids to go to bed but this time I really couldn't wait for them to go to bed! I felt my heart and soul pour through the paint and (what I know now as creative energy) was finally bursting out of me. While my first pieces were not the best, I shared my work on Facebook, always with the #notanartist, and (very polite) people always responded and liked and loved it. Every night, it was a rinse and repeat and repeat and repeat cycle and I felt closer to my old self- scratch that-

I felt resurrected.

Not my old self but definitely a more beautiful, confident, and stronger version.

Isn't that what grief and hardship does? It takes the shit that we go through, the really hard and ugly and yuck and muck shit that we go through... and it rebuilds us into something incredible. But... we have to be willing to do the work. We have to be willing to let God/nature/ energy create and mold us into what we are meant to become.

So, here I am on this journey and I'm ready for it. It won't always be pretty. I'll mess up. A lot. But, if anything, it'll be interesting. Will you join me?